Fennel salad

For Thanksgiving, Ed and I headed over to his aunt's house in Lexington, with 34 other guests. This meant an easy time for cooking for us, as we didn't have to deal with a turkey, but we were assigned to bring some sort of salad or vegetable. Browsing through the Ottolenghi cookbook, I saw this salad, and I instantly knew I wanted to make it.I'm not a huge raw fennel fan, but it turns out that when you slice it thinly and add a delicious dressing, it's pretty scrumptious.  And so pretty! The salad was a big hit, and we made it again a few weeks later for Ed's family back in Rochester, where it was also a big hit. So, I highly recommend you make this salad! Pomegranates are in season in the fall and winter, so now's the time.

Fennel Salad:
2 fennel bulbs
1/2 pomegranate, seeds only
~1/2C crumbled feta
~1/2C fresh tarragon leaves
~1/4C fresh flat-leaved parsley

Dressing:
Juice of a lemon
Olive oil (maybe 2-3tbs?)
2 tsp sumac
Salt
Pepper

Fennel fronds and more sumac for decorating

Mix together all the dressing stuff in a bowl.  Taste, adjust, taste.  Roughly chop the parsley and tarragon, and add that to the dressing. 

Use a mandolin or verrrry thinly chop the fennel bulbs. I sliced them lengthwise, removed the core, and mandolinned them from there.  Reserve some fronds for garnish.  Crumbled the feta, and put everything except the pomegranate seeds in the bowl - they'll turn it pink if you mix them around too much.  Toss it all around, let it marinate for a bit, and mix in the pomegranate seeds just before you serve it. Sprinkle with more sumac and some fennel fronds on top, for garnish. Enjoy!

Kale rolls

So, back over the summer Ed and I were browsing around the farmer's market in Londonderry, trying not to spend all our money on a single bunch of kale (these veggies can be expensive at the farmers markets...), and totally got suckered into buying a deliciously tasty bread-stuff-with-kale-inside-it thing. I don't remember if it was loaf-shaped or what, but I do remember a deliciously crusty outer bit and lemon-y garlic-y kale mixture on the inside.  Too overpriced to buy more than one of these kale loaves, I set out to make one, but didn't quite get around to that until months after the initial experience.

These kale rolls are awesome.  They're basically a cinnamon bun, only instead of a flaky soft dough, they have the texture of a focaccia, crusty on the outside and moist on the inside.  I highly recommend making some of these.  They can be a hearty dinner roll, or just most of your lunch.  The garlic is a bit much for breakfast, I have to admit...

You need one recipe of normal bread.  I recommend ~2C warm water, ~1tsp yeast, ~1tsp sugar, and as much flour as that takes to get it to a kneadable state.  Knead, then let it rise an hour or two.

For the filling, dice some garlic (ok, lots of garlic, like 3-4 cloves), and toast that in a little olive oil.  Chop a big ol' bunch of kale into small pieces, and add to the garlic, adding more oil as needed and the juice from a lemon.  Cook until the kale leaves are at a texture you like them at - I like them with a little bite to them still, but I know some people like to overcook their greens till they're good and dead. Don't forget some salt and pepper.  The filling should taste pretty good on its own, once you're done with it.

Now roll out your dough to ~1/4-1/2" thickness.  It doesn't really matter; the thinner your dough, the more rolls of kale you get, the thicker your dough, the more bready it'll taste.  This is sort of like a pizza dough - one size does NOT fit all.  

Spread the kale filling across the entire rectangle of rolled-out dough.  You don't want the filling to be too thick, but you also don't want it too thin.  Not the most helpful of statements, sorry.  Roll the dough, starting with the long end, until you have a single snake.  Then cut into ~3-4" slices.  Flip them onto the cut side on a greased pan, with a bit of space between the rolls.  Let that rise another 30 minutes or so, then stick them in a 400F oven for 20-30 minutes; until they're done, really.  One option is to brush melted butter or olive oil on top of the rolls just before baking, and that'll help them turn golden brown on top.

Enjoy!

If these directions are too vague... well, the good news is that even if you don't quite get it perfect, this is a tasty enough bread recipe that it's worth making a couple times to perfect it!

Snaussages and root veggies

Sorry for the dearth of posting - life went and got busy, somehow.  

Ed went to Carl's Sausage Kitchen the other day, and came home armed with a lot of sausages.  These ones were some Hungarian variety, possibly debrecener?  Anyway, they were quite tasty, just spicy enough that they left your mouth warm, not burning, with delicious flavor to them.  Yum!

We had meant to make a soup, of parsnips, celery root, and a potato or two, but it turned into more of a mash than a soup.  A good chunk of frozen chicken stock helped with the flavor of the soup.  Bacon bits on top also help with flavor!  We roasted up some yellow carnival cauliflower too, just the florets, and sprinkled them on top all pretty-like, and fried some sage leaves in butter.  Pretty darn tasty meal!

Popover pancakes

I decided that I wanted to experiment with some new breakfast ideas, rather than oatmeal, for the gazillionth time.  I prefer cheerios, but cheerios don't last me very long, since I'll eat half the box in one sitting.  mmmm, cheerios.  So, three days after buying cheerios, I no longer have breakfast food, and end up back with oatmeal.  Anyway, one of the problems with oatmeal is that while I find it totally edible, and actually enjoy it when you take the time to cook it slowly without stirring and there is good chew to the oats and you've put lots of fruits and nuts on top, well I don't enjoy it *enough* that I can sit there and eat enough of it that I'm not starving to death by 10am.  I'm pretty sure part of this is that oatmeal is mostly carbs, with a smidge of protein, and my body is REALLY GOOD at burning through carbs.  So anyway, I decided that maybe I should try eating a breakfast that has more protein and fat in the mix, but I don't really want to be eating bacon and sausage every morning.  That doesn't seem healthy.  And also, it's expensive for both your wallet and the planet to eat meat.  I get sick of eggs really quickly, so that's also not the answer, and I don't feel satiated by smoothies. 

So in a semi-compromise, but also in a bid for deliciousness (though anything vs bacon is hard-pressed to win that battle), I decided to try making popover pancakes.  Real pancakes don't really solve the problem of incorporating more protein and fat into breakfast.  Popovers are delicious, and consist mostly of eggs and milk.  But popovers take a lot of time to bake.  So, the birth of popovers cooked in a frying pan!  But of course, I didn't have milk.  This is a problem, but a solvable one, because I did have yogurt.  Plain yogurt and milk are totally substitutes...

1/2C plain yogurt
1 egg
1 pinch of salt
1 pinch of baking soda (popovers don't take leavening, but I didn't have a 450F oven to play with, and I did have yogurt, so baking soda it is)
1/2C flour
1 tbs butter, for cooking
1 peach

So, dump the ingredients into a 2C measure.  This lets you pour out your popovers!  And creates less mess to clean up.  Use a fork to beat everything together.  Melt the butter in a big frying pan.  Wash and cut up your peach (you can leave skin on).  Pour out some pancakes into the frying pan, dot with peach pieces.  Cook ~5min on one side, til the bubbles pop and don't re-fill.  Flip.  Cook another 3min.  Consume!  This made 4 pancakes.

I ate these plain, and they were delicious.  They aren't fluffy like pancakes; they're custardy like popovers.  Tomorrow, I am going to try putting some more yogurt and some rhubarb jam on top.  And maybe sprinkle with walnuts.  And maybe play with using a different flour than white flour, or see what happens when I use some almond flour in there with regular flour.  Or, since these aren't sweet except for the peach parts, I could go the savory route, and top with cheese, or avocado, or tomatoes and basil...

And hey, it's after 11am, and I'm not dying of starvation!

Though now that you mention it...

Nutritional breakdown -
Popover pancakes with a peach: 560cal, 22g fat, 73g carb, 23g protein
Oatmeal with a peach and walnuts: 360cal, 13g fat, 52g carb, 11g protein
So clearly, I just need to find something tasty and full of fat and protein to eat with my oatmeal to make it until lunchtime.  Back to the bacon hypothesis.  Or I could cook my oats in milk, but that makes it harder to clean the pan.  Or, keep eating popover pancakes!

Garlicky olives and panzanella

We got some jumbo green olives from the Greek store the other day, and decided to try and make those delicious marinated olives you can get from Whole Foods that cost $11.99/lb.  I'd say this was a raging success.  We used garlic (lots), preserved lemons, and red pepper flakes, and the result was very tasty when warm, and divine once it had sat in the fridge overnight.  Yum!

Garlicky Olives:
Olives, of some quantity (1-2C?)
A few cloves of garlic
1/4 of a preserved lemon
Red pepper flakes (~1/2 - 1tsp)
Olive oil

Warm some olive oil in a pan.  Dice your garlic and preserved lemon.  Toast the garlic lightly, then add the olives to the pan with the lemon and red pepper.  Cook for a bit, probably 10min, then put in a bowl and serve with toothpicks.  If you have the patience, leave the olives in the fridge overnight so the flavors can meld.  Enjoy!

Clearly, this was a long day.  Ed went out riding his bike and got mega sunburned, but revived upon smelling the garlicky olives, and then was happy to eat some panzanella, which is one of my favorite hot-weather salads of all time, even more so when you have some day-old bread that really needs using.  It's darn tasty, and gets a good Ed-rating.

Panzanella:
1 avocado
1-2 good tomatoes
1 cucumber
1/4 red onion
Lots of basil
1/4 loaf of french bread, or the equivalent amount of other bread
1 lemon
olive oil
salt
butter

To make the croutons, cut the bread into ~1/4" slices.  Toast the slices in a pan with the butter until one side is toasty golden brown.  Remove the bread from the pan (one side should be slightly chewy, one side should be crunchy and taste like butter), chop into bite-sized pieces.

Chop everything else into bite sized pieces.  Dress with salt, lemon juice, and olive oil.  Toss it all around in a bowl.  Serve, and enjoy!

Pasta with tomatoes and basil

Basil, tomatoes, and Parmesan cheese. these are some of my favorite things! Also, Rubaeus beer, which is a beer brewed with pure raspberries.  this makes a pretty darn good dinner, even though Ed is out of town.  Fresh tomatoes and basil on pasta with lots of Parmesan, really is one of the best ways to eat fresh pasta.  I highly recommend you try it!  For the real Alex – experience, eat it out of the mixing bowl straight from the pot!

With this sort of meal, you have to finish it with fresh peaches. Now THAT makes for true summer dinner!  Even better, you can cook it in the time it takes pasta to cook, so basically, seven minutes. Add some olive oil, some salt, and plenty of cheese and you're ready to go.

Nectarine season

It's nectarine season!  Fresh ripe nectarines have to be one of my favorite things ever.  A nectarine imported from California is a totally different beast - hard, mealy, and not that sweet (I'm sure it's the importing part, not the California part, that screws them up like that).  Local stone fruit is impossible to beat.  When you bite into a nectarine and the juice just runs down your chin and covers your hands, that's when you know life is good.  Nectarines are a nearly perfect fruit - they pair with meats, they pair with cheese, they're good in desserts, they're good raw... is there any situation where nectarines AREN'T your go-to fruit?  Didn't think so.  Unfortunately, the season here is far too short.  Massachusetts peaches and nectarines are so delicious, but so ephemeral.  Take advantage while you can!  Yum!

Also, a little St. Agur cheese never hurt anything...